Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a home packed of loud adolescent children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people choosing it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what becomes lax and drags the skin downward with it.”
You risk performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures underneath, enabling doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”
Whether injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting anonymously, says he would never use injectables in a client because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, one day after she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|
